


Shadows

by sweetcarolanne



Category: Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: Ambivalence, Atmospheric, Demons, Dreams and Nightmares, F/F, Ghosts, Haunting, Misses Clause Challenge, Possession, Romance, Shadow people, Surreal, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/pseuds/sweetcarolanne
Summary: Something terrifying lurks in the shadows... and Laura must put her fears aside, trusting in Carmilla to protect her...
Relationships: Carmilla/Laura (Carmilla)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 29
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Shadows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [regshoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/regshoe/gifts).



> Dear recipient, I hope you enjoy this story. Happy Yuletide! <3
> 
> Many thanks to my anonymous beta.
> 
> DISCLAIMER: I do not own the characters and am making no money from this.

In dreams, she had begun to return.

Mircalla, once known to me as Carmilla. The girl with the light step and the dark hair with warm hints of glowing gold. Her eyes lit with the brilliance of the moon, and the flowing white silk of her gown floating like mist as she walked towards my bed with a smile on her beautiful face.

Even more radiant than when I had first seen her, in what I had presumed to be a childhood reverie turned nightmare, she stretched out her slender hands towards me. 

Her lovely face should have been pale as death, for dead she was, but a delicate blush of pink made her skin seem alive and almost in the bloom of health. As she neared me and her fingertips reached to caress the length of my bare neck, I sensed the warmth of her and shuddered with more violence than if I had felt the icy touch of a corpse.

“My Laura, my love, you set me free,” she whispered. “My soul is pure again.”

She bent to kiss me and the strange, warm sensation of her lips upon my cheek, and then upon my own lips, was so real that that I sat bolt upright and shrieked aloud. Flailing to escape the bedclothes that weighed me down, I struggled to my feet, almost unable to breathe.

I could not have truly cried out, for all that issued from my mouth was a strangled moan that sounded like Carmilla’s name.

This was not, then, a return of the vampire from the past, I told myself as I lay back down upon the bed and covered my shivering body with the blankets. That unclean, undead creature was slain and gone forever, and I was alone and safe in my bedchamber, without the need to call for assistance or companionship. I was no longer a naïve and scared young girl, but a grown woman with my own way to make in life. Carmilla was in the past, and could never rise again to seduce and torment me.

Night after night these strange events occurred, beginning exactly one year since the day my father had passed away. 

Seven years after our return from Italy, my beloved Papa, my guide and protector for all of my young life, had fallen ill and died after a few short months. I was almost driven mad with grief, and had it not been for the kindness and steadfast, loving loyalty of dear Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, I know not what might have become of me. It was they who gently encouraged me to look towards the future, and to reach for hope and life again despite all I had endured. I had told them of my nightmares, and they fretted for my peace of mind, if not my very sanity.

“This place,” Madame had declared, waving a hand to indicate the schloss, which seemed unbearably dull and gloomy since the passing of its master, “needs love and light again.”

And with the help of Madame and Mademoiselle, I set about reclaiming my strength and finding a reason to carry on.

Several young men of my age, and several older widowed gentlemen, had shown interest in courting me once my period of mourning was at an end, but becoming a bride had somehow lost its appeal. Although the gentlemen were very charming indeed, something that I could not name held me back from accepting their proposals. This fact distressed my kindly former governesses, but they respected my decision and helped me find another way to end the loneliness they saw in me.

With the assistance of Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, I opened my abode to a select group of girls aged between thirteen and twenty; young ladies of good character and intelligence whose families lacked the financial resources to send them to expensive finishing schools or engage private tutorship for their daughters at home. Madame and Mademoiselle would teach the girls their lessons, and I would be their mentor, guide and confidante, hopefully influencing them for the better before they made their way into the world.

Soon the schloss was filled with the sweet sound of youthful voices, and the sombre atmosphere that had descended since my father’s death began to lift. The very air seemed purified by the innocence of my new charges, and I smiled to hear the melodic cadences of many languages during leisure hours. French and German, Italian and Spanish and even an English word or two here and there. I cannot describe in mere words how my heart rose from despair and dullness; I felt like a blithe young girl myself as I saw the expectant admiration in the eyes of my new little seminary’s inhabitants.

Daylight was a joyful time, but at night the schloss was still filled with strangeness.

As the moon rose and the cold stars glittered in the sky, unnatural shadows moved across the walls. Human forms, but featureless and elongated, stretching spider-like over every surface and vanishing without a trace whenever someone else would enter the room to keep me company. Many slender, darkened silhouettes of girls in flowing gowns danced all around, and I was always the only person to see them. 

Their heads would tilt and their supple hands would beckon, and I almost heard the sounds of melancholy voices, entreating me to join them.

“They crave you as I once did, when the fiend had me in her clutches,” Carmilla’s voice would whisper as I tossed and turned in my sleep. 

“You were the fiend,” I tried to scream at her, but my words faltered on my lips and Carmilla shook her head and kissed my brow.

“I was but a slave held in thrall, my dear one, taking what I needed to survive whilst she took all they were and ever could have been. Like a puppet, I was helplessly in her power as she pulled my strings, controlling me from far away. Try as I might, I could not escape her, and though I wished to spare you, beloved, she was on the verge of claiming you through me as well.”

“Who is she? And who are… they?”

She knelt beside my bed, taking my hands in hers and kissing them with all the intensity of a lover. 

“She is the one who called herself my mother, although she is the mother of none but ghosts and demons. And the shadows, they are lost souls, the souls she took and holds forever in a purgatory of her own making. She does not suffer from the madness that bound me to her, but spreads it like contagion through the land, a carrier of death and misery wherever she may roam.” 

My throat felt dry and constricted, and I clung to Carmilla despite my fear of her and whatever she had now become.

“Pay attention to the shadows. They cannot reach or harm you, but watch them as they change,” Carmilla whispered as she squeezed my hands.

When I awoke, my fingers still tingled from the gentle pressure of her touch.

Every nightfall from then on, I did as Carmilla asked, keeping a close eye on the movements of the shadow girls. My blood seemed to freeze in my veins with the terror of their presence, yet I did not look away. 

They whirled like ballet dancers, attempting a bizarre seduction with their eerie pantomime, these flat and blackened simulacra of female forms. Flickering from place to place as I sat upright and rigid in my chair, they seemed to mock my resolve to stay on the path of righteousness.

And on the fifth night, among the ghostly maidens’ giddy revolutions, I saw two shadows that remained completely still.

More defined than the other revenants, a darker shade of black, they seemed to watch me from the wall. One appeared to be a woman at midlife, tall and regal, and somehow horrifyingly familiar. Her companion was a girl of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. The young one’s build was slight, and her hair flowed to her waist in a profusion of silken waves. As a chilling draft surrounded me and plunged the room into freezing cold, I could almost catch a hint of jasmine scent from her modest gown and feel the softness of her hair as it billowed all around her like a cloud. So clear were their images that I could almost make out faces in the inky darkness before me, and I struggled to choke back a fearful scream.

“All is as I said, and still you do not trust me,” a mournful voice murmured from behind my shoulder. I gripped the arms of the chair until my knuckles whitened, but did not turn my head.

“Why should I? You tried to kill me. You told so many lies,” I hissed, my heart pounding in my chest with not only the terror of the shadow-fiends in front of me, but at the realisation that I was neither asleep nor dreaming.

“I omitted many truths, at the behest of the she-devil who enslaved me, but I never lied. The name I gave was mine, albeit changed in form. My love was true, and will remain so always… and death, my love, was not your destiny. It was my intent to bring you back to life. Eternal life.”

Warm, soft lips briefly touched my neck, and the shadows vanished.

“I would have found a way to break free from my captor, and a way to free you also,” Carmilla whispered. “And I have returned from beyond the veil that divides this world from the next, to warn you and protect you.”

Her fingers carded through my hair, and I felt her bend to kiss me once again.

“You saw them, Laura – images foretelling the return of the fiend and her new minion. They have come for you, and the girls you have taken under your roof. So much youth and innocence for them to sully and devour… and the God you pray to cannot save them.”

“Who can?” I found myself whispering in reply, my voice so faint that only the spectral ears of my companion could hear the sound.

“Let me help you.”

Carmilla stood before me now, her lacy white nightgown flowing all around her and one slim hand stretched out towards me, silently bidding me to rise.

In a daze, I followed Carmilla back to my bed and lay down. She stood above me and leaned to place her loving lips on my forehead.

“Dare to trust me, beloved Laura, as you dared not do before.”

She fell to her knees beside the bed, and her fingers interlaced with mine. Kisses rained down upon my face and neck, and my eyes began to blur with tears at the strange familiarity of her passion.

“I will not allow her to snatch you from me and drag you to the depths of hell. I will not allow the soul she now has in bondage, the soul you could have known as a bosom friend but for the predations of the demoness, to menace your young charges. Let me stay with you for always – when the hour of midnight strikes, let me into your heart for always and you will have the eternity of bliss I so longed to bring you.”

A terrifying dizziness gripped me, and I would have succumbed to nausea but for the tight grip of Carmilla’s hands that kept my focus on her eerie, searching eyes.

“Let me in,” she cried, and her lips claimed mine so fiercely that I tasted blood and swooned, unable to resist her any longer.

When the morning came, and I entered the drawing room to greet the seminary’s newest pupil and her widowed mother, I felt Carmilla with me still. 

Her tender strength helped me to stand firm and resolute, and the purity that cleansing death had brought her made me brave. Carmilla’s ancient blood flowed in my veins now, and her preternatural senses made my mortal ones far keener than they were before.

“Countess von Reinhardt and Mademoiselle Belinda von Reinhardt,” a servant announced as he bowed and ushered the guests inside. A handsome woman, tall and with the bearing of nobility, and a slender girl with flowing, pale gold hair.

The lady showed no recognition of me upon entering, but her face was far too familiar. And although I had never before laid eyes upon the girl she called her daughter, I saw beyond the thin veneer of the false name that echoed the one she had in life.

I may have never known Bertha Rheinfeldt while she lived, but now I knew her all too well.

With Carmilla’s light step, extended hands, and a cold light within my eyes, I came forward to greet my guests.


End file.
